David Harbour (left) and Sasha Lane in “Hellboy”
Paranormal investigator Hellboy is back, rebooted in a grand, gory adventure that mesmerizes as much as it exhausts.
Eschewing the stylish, family-friendly feel for a brusque, brash aesthetic, “Hellboy” is reintroduced as the quintessential heroic demon, although aptly sporting a less-tidy look this time.
The franchise restarts with the introduction of a major villainess, the immortal sorceress Nimue the Blood Queen (Milla Jovovich), whose body parts were literally scattered and hidden, in ancient times.
Back to the present: Hellboy (David Harbour), is looking for a colleague in Mexico, and gets a cryptic message about the end times after a bloody encounter.
Sent by his adoptive father Trevor Bruttenholm (Ian McShane) to Europe to assist another group of monster-hunters, Hellboy figures in one mystery after another, aided by the young psychic Alice (Sasha Lane) and a tough agent with a potentially dangerous secret, Ben (Daniel Dae Kim).
And, sure enough, someone is bent on reassembling the Blood Queen, which could spell the end of the mostly defenseless human race.
The film by Neil Marshall, whose directing credits include “Dog Soldiers” and “Game of Thrones,” has less sheen and cohesion than Guillermo del Toro’s 2004 and 2008 movies. The shift to an R-rated film (R-13 in the Philippines) is understandable, as the mythology is filled with violent creatures. So there are monsters galore, some of them cursing like sailors and getting into bloodier than usual fisticuffs. The beast designs are grotesque but entrancing, reminiscent of intricately sculpted action figures.
Harbour, as the new actor, does OK—so it’s not entirely noticeable that it isn’t Ron Perlman under the thick, red prosthetics anymore.
McShane offers a tougher father figure than the late John Hurt’s version of his character. Jovovich, meanwhile, is adequate, gorgeous but predictably spouting megalomaniacal villain lines.
And that simplicity makes this new “Hellboy” less engrossing, apart from the crammed-in origin scenes, and an Arthurian backstory that almost feels lost in all the chaos.
The effects are spectacular and imaginative, at least—check out the ectoplasmic phantoms conjured up by Alice, and the nightmarish visuals in the climactic scenes. There’s bone-crushing, video-game catharsis throughout the film, but you’d be hard-pressed to truly care about the stakes and these characters.